Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Tom Pursglove and Daniel Zeichner

Monday 4th September 2023 Commons Chamber

[Tom Pursglove]

I am fortunate that my hon. Friend was one of my predecessors as Minister for Disabled People, as he is a tireless campaigner on these issues and has done much to take the agenda forward. On the severe disability group, we remain committed to this work. We have worked with an expert group of specialist health professionals to draw up a set of draft criteria. We have started initial testing at small scale, and we are looking to scale that up as we move forward, because we want to get this right and we think that this is a significant change.

[Daniel Zeichner (Cambridge) (Lab)]

11. What steps his Department is taking to help reduce waiting times for Access to Work assessments.

[Neil Coyle (Bermondsey and Old Southwark) (Lab)]

16. Whether his Department plans to take steps to reduce the time taken by the decision-making process for applications to the Access to Work scheme.

[The Minister for Disabled People, Health and Work (Tom Pursglove)]

Access to Work has received a significant increase in applications over the past year and has recruited new staff to meet the increased demand and reduce the time it takes to make decisions. We are also transforming the Access to Work service through increased digitalisation that will make the service more efficient and the application process easier, and improve the time taken from application through to decision.

[Daniel Zeichner]

I think the Minister knows that the waiting times are too long for all applicants, but may I draw his attention to an event in Cambridge that I hosted earlier this year with the local jobcentre where we highlighted job opportunities for the neurodivergent community? Will he tell us what impact these long waits have on people who are neurodivergent?

[Tom Pursglove]

I am sure the hon. Gentleman will be pleased to know that, last week, 88% of claims were paid within 10 days and that we are taking steps to drive further improvement. The online application capacity that came on stream in June is a significant part of that, but we are also putting additional staff on to processing claims. We are streamlining various processes to ensure that people get access to that support sooner. Anecdotally, officials are saying that that is beginning to bear fruit. What we are not doing is speeding up that process at the cost of getting the right decision and the right outcome. We will continue to move this forward, and we are already making progress.